We are quick to tell stories about other people’s behaviour, and it’s often to the detriment of our wellbeing and mental health.

For example, imagine a friend doesn’t reply to a message, or a work colleague is a bit abrupt in a meeting, or someone walks past without acknowledging you.

The mind often jumps to conclusions in instances like this: they’re annoyed with me, I’ve said something wrong, they’re being dismissive.

And maybe they are annoyed with you; maybe you did say something wrong; maybe they really were being dismissive.

Then again, maybe not. Unless you’re a mind-reader who somehow knows exactly what other people are thinking, you can’t know for sure.

If you do buy into those negative thoughts, however, then negative feelings – hurt, anxiety, anger, unease, or a combination of them all – will surely follow.

All too often in such instances, that negative interpretation can begin to feel certain, almost settled, as if it were a fact rather than simply the mind’s first reading of what has happened.

A principle known as Hanlon’s razor can be useful in such instances. It suggests we should avoid attributing to malice what can be explained by error, distraction, or simple human fallibility.

A razor is a mental rule of thumb; It isn’t always correct, but it tends to be right often enough to serve as a useful shortcut for quicker, simpler decision-making. As it happens, Hanlon’s razor is a bit more more blunt than I’ve implied. The exact wording: ‘Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity’.

The wording is obviously humorous, and you may have seen it used sarcastically online to mock the tendency to over-interpret politicians’ intentions (for example, when a clumsy policy is taken as a cunning plan to ruin everyone’s lives, rather than the more prosaic possibility of poor judgement).

Jokes aside, however, the underlying idea – that we are quick to critical judgment – is a psychologically astute one.

This tendency is well recognised within cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which posits that our emotional reactions are shaped less by events than by the meanings we attach to them. When those meanings are inaccurate or overly negative, the emotional response tends to follow in kind.

Mind-reading
Two common thinking patterns are especially relevant here.

The first, as already noted, is mind-reading (“He thinks I’m useless”, “She did that on purpose”).

The second is personalisation, when you assume that external events are directly related to you (for example, a friend is quiet and you think, “it must be something I said”).

If you pause and think about this for a moment, you might recognise that this is something you often see in others, and maybe in yourself.

A brief email can be viewed as evidence of annoyance or hostility, a delayed response to a text message as rejection, a neutral look as disapproval – all too often, we fill in the gaps with a negative and overly-certain story.

This can become a mental habit, and it’s not a good one. Routinely seeing everyday interactions this way can drive anxiety and low mood. It can also hurt relationships, breed cynicism and anger, and make the world seem more hostile than it really is.

This is where a gentler, questioning version of Hanlon’s razor can be useful.

Ask yourself: what else could explain this?

With this question, we’re not trying to replace a negative certainty with a positive certainty, but to introduce an appropriate level of doubt. Yes, maybe your first thought was true, but maybe it wasn’t.

Maybe your colleague was rushing, your friend meant to reply later, or the apparent slight had nothing at all to do with you.

Unkind
I should add that this isn’t about explaining away genuinely unkind behaviour.

Sometimes, people can be careless, dismissive, or malicious. Patterns matter, and if someone has a long history of being unkind to you, then that context can’t be ignored.

The aim of this mental exercise is not to deny repeated bad behaviour towards you.

However, our first interpretation is often harsher than necessary in the everyday ambiguities that make up much of social life. We don’t know what others are thinking and we can be too quick to assume people’s intentions.

This is especially the case when we are stressed, tired or already feeling vulnerable.

That’s where Hanlon’s razor can be useful.

A short pause, and a more open perspective, can be enough to soften those certainties and leave room for a more balanced reading of situations.